Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Madbob's Miniatures - Prepping time with a Milliput wash

I have been slowly working on the PaK 40 Auf S307(f), and Geschutzwagen 39H(f) from Madbob's kickstarter. As I mentioned in those posts the resin he uses is a little rough and the details are not as sharp as I would like them to be. While I can't really do anything about the detail short of doing some super detail work (and these are game pieces after all)I can fix some of the roughness of the resin.This is a trick I learned for dealing with pitted metal miniatures. I think I picked this up from either a class with Jeremie Bonamant or with Lilly Troy. The idea is to fix something like this as quickly and easily as possible, what could be simpler than a wash?First mix up a small bit of Milliput (I prefer the regular but the super fine works for this too). Add water to some small container (I typically use the plastic from a blister pack). Add the Milliput and work it into the water. This is not quite as easy as it sounds, you kind of use a mortar and pestle type motion to breakdown the Milliput into the water. I find the end of a paint brush to be quite handy for this. I recommend wearing gloves as Milliput is slightly toxic. If you feel the tips of your fingers tingling you forgot the gloves.You are looking for a consistency about like cream. You want it to flow off the brush yet remain thick enough to be a filler and not drip down the side of your model. I just keep adding Milliput or water till I get the consistency I want. A little Milliput goes a long way!Once I'm happy with the mixture I use an old craft brush and just paint it on to the surfaces that are rough or pitted. For the Madbob armor one coat was enough to reduce the roughness to an acceptable level. I restricted myself to just dealing, mostly, with the armor panels. If its a very pitted surface it might take two coats. It dries pretty fast when its painted on like this.

The Geschutzwagen had some air bubbles in the top of the shell cases. I pulled out the Squadron Green for that. Overall these are really good castings from an air bubble perspective. You also need to watch out for the bogies on anything based on the Lorraine Schlepper chassis as there is a spot that doesn't fill well right on the outside of each bogie.

The blob of Milliput that I mixed up. I used, maybe, a quarter of this. I should have had some bases sitting nearby to work on!

This is the Milliput wash. It flows but it doesn't drip.

Its hard to see here, but the whiter portions of the vehicles are the original resin. I didn't apply the wash to the tires, treads, bogies, or guns. The armor is a slightly yellower color, that's where I applied my wash. These are now ready for some primer, finally!